(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for notifying a communication apparatus of an incoming call.
(2) Description of the Related Art
First, a conventional mobile phone will be described in terms of its appearance. As shown in FIG. 9, the conventional mobile phone is composed of a display unit 9 and an operation unit 10. The operation unit 10 includes ten keys, a talk key 13 used to have conversation with a caller, a power key 14, and a menu key 12 for setting various functions.
FIG. 10 is a block diagram showing the construction of the conventional mobile phone. As shown in FIG. 10, the conventional mobile phone is composed of an antenna 1 for transmitting and receiving radio signals, a duplexer 2 for switching between transmission and reception, a reception unit 3 for demodulating reception signals, a transmission unit 4 for modulating transmission signals, an operation unit 10 with which users instruct operations, a display unit 9 which displays messages or incoming/outgoing information, a storage unit 8 storing programs for various functions, phone book data, transmission/reception messages or the like, a microphone 7 for inputting voice during voice communication, a speaker 6 for outputting voice during voice communication, and a CPU 5 for controlling various functions and operations of the mobile phone.
With the above construction, when receiving an incoming call, the mobile phone recognizes a caller's phone number, compares it with phone numbers registered with a phone book stored in itself, and if the phone book has a number that is identical with the caller's phone number, it displays a name corresponding to the detected number as the caller's name on the display unit 9. It should be noted here that the condition “the phone book has a number that is identical with the caller's phone number” is satisfied when either the caller's phone number is perfectly identical with a number in the phone book, or partly identical.
There is a known apparatus that stores, in the phone book in the storage unit 8, caller's names and phone numbers in a manner that correspondences between them are indicated, or, as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,604, an apparatus that stores face pictures and caller's phone numbers and caller's names in a manner that correspondences between them are indicated.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,907,604 discloses a technique in which when receiving an incoming call, a mobile phone searches the phone book for an image that corresponds to a caller's phone number and display a retrieved image on a display. This technique relates to a videoconference system. With this technique, when receiving from someone a request to participate the videoconference or an incoming call, the system displays a face picture of the person on a display so that the participant can decide whether to make a response to the person. If the participant decide not to make a response, the face picture disappears and never be displayed again.
On the other hand, in the case of a mobile phone, if the mobile phone user fails to respond to an incoming call for some reason, the user can see information concerning the not-responded call by displaying an incoming call history list which is a list of incoming calls the mobile phone received in the past, where each item of the list indicates whether a response has been made or not to an incoming call. FIG. 11 shows an example of the incoming call history list displayed on the screen. As shown in FIG. 11, each item of the list includes an incoming date and time, a caller's name (if the caller has not been registered with the phone book, a caller's phone number instead), and indication of whether a response has been made to the incoming call or not. There is another type of mobile phone that displays only the number of incoming calls the mobile phone received in the past and not responded, instead of the incoming call history list.
It should be noted here that the caller's number is a phone number that is sent from the caller's machine when the caller makes a call to the mobile phone. The user of the mobile phone can identify the caller by the phone number. This technique has already been adopted in many mobile phones, and is well known.
In the incoming call history list shown in FIG. 11, the incoming calls are arranged in the order of reception, and the most recently received call is displayed at the top of the list. The incoming call history list indicates that there are 10 incoming calls to which no response has been made, and the screen as the first page displays four pieces of information concerning recent four incoming calls which includes two responded incoming calls (incoming calls to which responses have been made) and two not-responded incoming calls (incoming calls to which no response has been made). The screen can be scrolled to display the next pages of the list. There are many scrolling methods depending on the types of mobile phones and any scrolling method will do. Note also that the number of pieces of information displayed on one screen for the list is not limited to four.
Some mobile phones provide a service called “call waiting”. With this service, the user is notified of a new incoming call while talking with another caller, and can respond to the new call. For example, the base station transmits a signal indicating a new incoming call from a person B, to the mobile phone while the mobile phone user is talking with a person A. Receiving the signal, the mobile phone outputs a sound such as a beep pulse to notify the user of the new incoming call. When notified the new call, the user can respond to the new call to talk with the person B while putting the person A on hold, or disregard the new call. If a predetermined time period set in the base station passes without response to the new call, the base station terminates reception of the new call. Such a new incoming call may be connected to an answering service provided by the base station.
There is a further type of mobile phone which has a timer inside and if no response is made to such a new incoming call in the call waiting for a predetermined time period, it terminates reception of the new call.
Such incoming calls received during a conversation can be checked with the incoming call history list after the conversation is over.
As described above, with a conventional phone book function in a mobile phone in which caller's phone numbers, names, addresses, and/or images are stored in a manner correspondences between them are indicated, the user can display the incoming call history list to check the dates and times and names of the received calls to which no response has been made. However, it is impossible for the user to recognize only the not-responded calls immediately. This is because they are displayed together with the responded calls. Also, the incoming call history list is displayed only when the user presses a button for displaying the list, and is not displayed immediately after reception of the incoming call ends. As a result, the user cannot obtain information, such as the incoming time and the caller's name, of the most recent incoming call immediately after the reception of the incoming call ends.
Also, it often happens that the user cannot recall the face of a caller even if he/she knows the caller's name. This indicates that sometimes only the caller's name is not enough for the user to recognize completely who has made him/her a call. Accordingly, for the mobile phone user, display of the incoming call history list that contains only the caller's phone numbers and names is not satisfactory.
It should be noted here that in the present document, “responded” indicates that the user talked with a caller, namely the phone was “off the hook”; and “not-responded” indicates that the user did not talk with a caller, namely “on the hook”, which may happen if, for example, the user disregards the incoming call, the user does not recognize the incoming call, the incoming call is recorded by the answering function of the terminal, the incoming call is connected to the answering service provided by the base station, or the incoming call is received in the call waiting.